Flower

I have been thinking about it for a little while now. I finally purchased a jewlers saw and some mother of pearl blanks. I got white and grey to contrast with one another. I decided to create an inlay piece from scratch. I chose this pattern out of an inlay book I purchased.

I thought since it was my first attempt I wouldn't be quite that ambitious, but took the first flower for the design.  The first step is to break down the pattern into geometric shapes.

Here are the leaves at the base of the plant.  I will do these in white mother of pearl.

Here are the leaves to the left of the plant that I plan on doing in grey mother of pearl.

Here is the grey mother or pearl against the backdrop.  I decided to use Mahongy for this and wanted the grain going left to right to give the impression of a horizon behind it.  This presented a small challenge in carving since it is easier to go with the grain.  I also decided that the 'stalk' of the plant would be Maple.  I like the idea of contrasting woods, and I wanted the grain in the stalk to go perpendicular to the horizon.

Once I had cut the shapes out of the shell using my saw (I will do a separate blog on cutting shell), I arranged the pieces on the Mahogany to visualize it.

As with all inlay projects, I spread some white out on the wood, glued the pieces down and scribed around it.  I then removed the pieces by gently prying a chisel under the pieces.  I then ran the outline with a sharp knife to deepen the grooves.

Here is the piece routed out.  I decided to put a sun in the background.  My wife does polymer clay so thought we would experiment a little.

I ended up sanding a little too much on the right side and part of the sun and one whole leaf was sanded off - oops.